Read about a third of the way down. for $5 you can buy plans for a home-built oven, costing $10-$15 in materials., or a manual on solar cooking (including baking) for $10 that includes the plans.

Many years ago, when I was a Boy Scout leader, I cooked with solar ovens, and made quick breads. Yeast breads I always did in a Dutch oven, because I could get the temperature to 450°F easily with wood coals. If you barbecue consider using your coals, before or after grilling, to bake in a Dutch oven. You have to put coals on the top, otherwise your loaves won't brown on top.

If you click on "Build a Solar Cooker" under the Solar Cooking: The Basics heading, you'll find more different designs and plans than you can possibly imagine! I rather like the ones based on an umbrella covered in something shiney.

A guy lived a few blocks away from us has one of those aluminum/glass solar ovens commercially built. It's very neat but not cheap, to the least. I did try building a small one a years agao but had only used it for baking potatoes. Here's a picture of my humble solar cooker?

those 325 degree temps. I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and have a shady back yard so my solar oven doesn't get opened until January or February when I'm RVing in the southern California desert and the temperatures are in the low 70s. The weather doesn't need to be hot for these ovens to be effective, but you do need sunshine. And the calmer the wind, the better. I think mine will fly in a stiff breeze.

I live in the North Bay Area. It gets very hot here in the summer (sometimes), but sun is limited in my yard thanks to surrounding hills, trees, and fences. It would still be fun to try because no way I'm going to heat the oven on those really hot days (100+)--we have no AC.

I've committed to making all the bread my family eats, so I can't stop baking in the summer. I'm going to experiment with baking on the gas grill when it's too hot inside, but that's still pretty hot and miserable to work with on a hot, hot day.

Luckily, a run of hot or warm days is often followed by the return of coastal fog (I call it "North Bay Air Conditioning"), so I try to stay ahead of the need and do as much baking as possible on cooler days.

I've been thinking about trying this for a while - this thread has nudged me into actually doing it - a project to try with the kids. We moved house a year ago and still have a number of large cardboard boxes around the house (!) which will do nicely for this.....

In Boy Scouts big brother and I made a dandy parabolic reflector cooking "something or other" out of cardboard and aluminum foil, with a stand for a hamburger at the center focal point of the parabola. Just about blew up the meat it was so hot. About 3.5 feet across and a foot deep it produced awe inspiring heat. Kinda like this ...

Now, want to make your own pure drinking water for free on the same principle?

Google Aqua del Sol

We produce around 2.5 gallons every day of pure water for home drinking. The best part is ... no government involved, no regulations, no waste in plastics and if everything goes wrong with the economy we'll still have clean water. Very cool.

Hmmmm.. i can't think of this. If this will be implemented. Then, no need of baking powder no more, the rays of the sun will be the one who will make the fresh loafs rise because of the solar power of baking..lols.. crazy days!!! i was just surpose by and i encounter this solar power queensland. i never dreamed this one..

I started cooking with a cardboard solar box cooker in March. You can easily get to 200+ degrees (boiling) even in March with the sun rather low in the sky. I've found bread to be a challenge. I did manage to get a molasses-yeast-wheat loaf cooked all the way thru but it took 5 hours :). So...I've got some other designs to try but I just wanted to give the cardboard box cookers a heads up :). Yeast-based breads are supposed to be the most difficult.

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